What’s the scam with the number of vans that pull up next to me in a gas station parking lot or Best Buy and tell me they accidently got an extra pair of speakers and want to know if i want to buy them? are they stolen? broken? some competition selling discount speakers? I got asked twice in the same parking lot within 10 minutes from two different people…
Stolen goods, dude.
Shun them like the plague. 
One sample description of the “white van scam”.
Short answer: No, they didn’t “get an extra pair of speakers”. The speakers are real and not stolen, but they are cheap and low-quality, and the van guys are instructed to seek out marks and sell 'em the speakers for as much as they can get.
It’s for the most part a scam. The speakers (or home theatre system in other cases) are from actual manufacturers but are low quality.
The guys pushing them out of vans work directly with these companies. They will claim with bogus literature that they are “high-end” speakers, claim that they’re worth $1000-$2000, and haggle with you to get $200-$600 for them.
In actuality if you compare them in quality to whats out there they’re probably worth $50-$80. (Some who’ve been taken actually say they like how they sound).
Your best bet is to 1) Just avoid them, 2) Offer them $20 and use them as end tables, 3) tell them your totally interested but need to get your cash from your office and your buddies will probably want some too. Then tell them you work over at the police station and see if they’d like to follow you there.
One of these companies is Dahlton. If you look up their website you’ll notice theres no way to contact them besides an e-mail address. No phone number, no street address.
It’s a scam. How it normally works is the guys in the van say they have an extra set of speakes on the van, they might say the warehouse loaded an extra set or somthing along those lines. They will show you an invoice saying the speakers are worth (for example) $1000 but they just want to get rid of them and are willing to sell them for $500.
In reality the speakers are just cheap speakers, and anything the guys in the van can get for them over their low cost is profit .
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- IP lookup?.. http://www.internic.net/whois.html
(I could not find a single site particularly about Dahlton speakers…?)
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- IP lookup?.. http://www.internic.net/whois.html
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Also note that the speakers will (most of the time) look very cool - because they’re supposed to be $2000 speakers, yes? - but it’s the inside part that’s junk. I had a friend fall for this once and the speakers looked really modern and top notch… but inside they were hacked together Radio Shack junk…
I bought some. Two or three years ago, I was approached in a Home Depot/K-Mart parking lot by a couple of guys telling the story about the warehouse having loaded them up with an “extra” set. I’m not the kind of guy who ever gets involved in off-the-truck buying, and I told them I wasn’t interested at all; but they kept on, showing me a laminated sheet that pictured the speakers (as well as smaller models) with a price of something like a thousand each. They claimed to be on the way to a bar to install the other pair they had in the van, and just wanted to offload these before they got there, for, say, $450 the pair. The boxes were printed with legit-looking info, and still sealed; they offered to open one to show me the speaker. I still wasn’t interested, but I looked at it anyway. It was heavy, the cabinet was well made, and it felt good and solid.
I still really wasn’t interested, but I told them I’d give them the hundred bucks I had on me. They tried to get me to go to an ATM for more cash, but I wasn’t having that, so they settled for the hundred. I loaded them into my car and took them home.
I hooked 'em up, and whaddaya know – they’re really pretty darn good speakers! A little deficient on the high end maybe, but I added a couple of smaller speakers that I already had, to fill in the high end and flesh out the mid range, and I’ve used them ever since. The only real problem with them is that they have way too much power for a three-family house and I can rarely use them past a volume level of about three; on the few occasions when I have been able to crank them, like when everyone else in the house was on vacation, they’ve sounded great even at the highest levels of volume. I’ve actually been thinking of passing them on to a friend who has a loft where he could really use the power.
What was weird was that soon after I got them, I searched online for more information about the brand and model – ProAudio 8.2 is what they were calling them at the time – and the only mention I could find was on an audiophile message board where they were discussed at some length. Apparently they were being sold far and wide – as far as Australia – and always out of white vans. Sometimes, like in my case, they were actually decent speakers; in other cases, they were very bad indeed. I think a few people reported that all they’d got was empty (if well-made) cabinets. The packaging went so far as to include warranty registration forms with a Canadian address that apparently didn’t really exist. (Me, I never send those things in anyway, so…) But no one had any clue where they actually came from.
I figure that even though I may have been stoopid to get involved with what was obviously a shady deal, I didn’t do too badly for a hundred bucks. They’re by no means speakers that would or should cost anywhere near a thousand each, but for the price I paid, they’ve served me well enough. Still, very definately – caveat emptor!
From about a year ago. Amp has a good link in this thread…
Try www.dahltonloudspeakers.com
They don’t even have any info on how to order them or where to buy them???
Dude, don’t worry, they’ll find you.
I’ve never heard of this scam until this thread, but now that you mention it, I’m almost positive an older friend of mine fell for this. I’ve been to his house a few times after he got the speakers. He basically recited everyone else’s story about a guy in a truck. His speakers didn’t sound too bad. Now I’m curious. I wanna go over to his house and investigate now. “Hey, can I take you speakers apart?”
OK, what’s wierd about my story is that I was approached by “white van guys” in a supermarket parking lot who said they would just give me the speakers for free. Now I was travelling on business and I don’t need any speakers so I told them “No Thanks”, but why on Earth would they just give them to me? Unless they were not really going to give them to me. 
I fell for this about 10 years ago. I felt proud of myself for getting 2 speakers for $100. The sound was horrible. I even thought it was because of cheap wires. So I bought better wires, and the sound was still lousy. I felt like an idiot. Lesson learned.
My husband tells me he once was a side-of-the-road seller of speakers and car stereos as a teenager/very young adult. He said they were low grade crap and that they charged as much as anyone was willing to pay.
Heh. I started a Pit thread about this last year. Warning: lots of profanity, but not for the reasons you might think.
Not to make fun of the situation, but did you feel like a huge ass?
I have encountered the “white van” twice, but was smart enough never to buy any merchandise. Being skeptical the first time and well informed of the scam the second time has inspired in me a burning hatred for them and their kind.
The usual victims are young males that look like they’d be interested in and can afford the goods. I’m in my early 30’s, professional, and I drive a red Mustang GT.
I must look like a big sucker to them. 
Y’know, to me, this is the kind of thing the Straight Dope is for - fighting ignorance. If you or someone you know may fall victim to this scam, discuss it with them before it’s too late.
Haha, that site is hilarious. It was obviously cobbled together in about a half hour. I wonder, is there anything illegal about selling speakers out of vans? Presumably, commercial parking lots don’t allow soliciting and suchforth, but do people ever get prosecuted for this?
So, did your white van tire slashing guys ever get caught?